GW Parkway Race Weekend

This weekend the heat came back and was probably signaling the start of summer. I had a busy weekend scheduled with a bike ride on Saturday, and the GW parkway 10 miler followed by an easy bike ride on Sunday. Saturday I made sure to do a good job with hydration after my heat related disaster last year.

Saturday’s bike ride went very well and I was happy with my speed for the ride given the terrain and the watts I was at, the bike looks good for my goals in the upcoming races. I have the Columbia triathlon in a couple of weeks but the main goal is to get in a solid month of training in May to get ready for Eagleman. I’m actually planning to take a couple of trips to Cambridge to ride the bike course this month. The only interesting thing that happened on my ride was I jumped the chain over the big ring and it wrapped around the crank arm a couple of times. It took me a while to figure out how to fix it but now that I do it’s a quick fix I can deal with if it happens in a race (just pedal backwards).

Sunday was the GW Parkway 10 mile race. The goal for the race was 1:15:00. And came very close finishing in 1:15:20, given the heat I am very happy with the results, and I came in 266th out of 4,000 people. The race started at Mount Vernon and headed down the Parkway into Alexandria. Nothing to excited to report about the race the only thing of interest happened before the race. I was totally getting hit on by a 36 year old while waiting for the race to start and she was quite aggressive. Does that count as Cougar? Or is the cutoff at 40?

I also saw a blogger that I like to read out on the course taking pictures a couple time and I shouted hi the second time I saw him.

I split the race into three segments, I used the first two mile to get going and through the crowds, the middle six miles at my goal pace, and then the last two miles go fast. Looking back at how I handled the race the only thing I might do differently is take advantage of the downhill at the start instead of trying to hold back a little like I did yesterday. I didn’t have any extra kick at the end to make up some time, but that’s just the way it is some times. If I was rested I easily would have been under 1:15:00 so like I said before I’m very happy with the results.